The Game That Lasted

I’ve never cared about cars. Don’t have a license, probably never will get one. If I did somehow find myself driving, I’d be a menace—throwing shells at other drivers, dropping banana peels, shooting balloons off kids’ hands. Basically I’d be playing Super Mario Kart on actual highways, which I think explains something fundamental about me.

The only thing I got to play on my brother’s SNES was Mario Kart. Zelda? Watching only. Super Mario? I could beat it once and then I was done—Bowser’s castle, the whole star road, and the magic vanished. Mario Kart was the one that lasted. Eight tracks you could run forever, chasing your ghost around Rainbow Road trying to shave off a tenth of a second, knowing you’d never actually improve but playing anyway.

The real game happened when my siblings were there. All three of us on the couch, screaming, throwing controllers, rage-quitting and coming back. It didn’t stay civil. We’d end up wrestling, actually furious, the game bleeding into physical chaos on the living room floor. My mother stopped trying to separate us. She probably hoped the SNES would just fail one day, spontaneously die. It didn’t.

We bought another SNES years later and started over. Same tracks, same wars. Same endless loop of quitting and immediately pressing start again. I have every corner memorized now—the drifts, the shortcuts, the curve of each track. I can run it blind. But only the flat, bright 2D version on the SNES. The 3D ones on N64, GameCube, Wii never worked for me. Too much visual noise, geometry that doesn’t sit right. I’m only fluent in that one version.

The game that stayed fun. The one that never asked you to finish.